To say that college freshman Amelia Streuber is “accomplished” is a gross understatement. She is tremendously successful on the field, in the classroom and also in the publishing department… more on that in a second.

We first got to know the current Oregon State freshman in the spring of 2024 when she led her Canyon Del Oro (Oro Valley, Ariz.) High team to the 4A State Championship Game that included a semi-final playoff game where she recorded 18 strikeouts in a shutout victory.

Amelia was named to the All-State team that junior campaign and the Pitcher of the Year in Southern Arizona as she went 19-1 with 174 strikeouts, a 0.49 WHIP and an impressive 0.79 ERA.

Known for her accuracy in pounding the strike zone and throwing in the mid-60’s with spin and command, she continued to impress in the second half of 2024 when she joined the highly successful Arizona Rising club team coached by Steve Appel.

When the 2025 Line Drive HOT 100 Rankings came out, Amelia was ranked No. 71 and Coach Appel was very complimentary about his outstanding pitcher… here’s her bio when it was published in October of ’24:

T-71—Amelia Streuber, P, Arizona Storm – Appel 

Arizona Storm Head Coach Steve Appel describes Amelia as a “bulldog in the circle” thanks to her proficiency in throwing five pitches in the mid-60’s to confound opposing hitters. Committed to compete at Oregon State next Fall, the coach continues: “She has no fear of any opponent when she steps in the circle. Amelia’s experience and grit are nice additions to our team and we’re looking for big things from her this season!” The right-hander is a senior at Canyon Del Oro High in Oro Valley, Ariz., and has the athletic skills to play the outfield when not in the circle.

Her 2025 year in softball would again be very successful.

She led Del Oro High to the 5A state title game and was named the Arizona 5A Conference Player of the Year and finished her esteemed prep career earning her fourth 1^st Team All-Region honors and being named the Southern Arizona Pitcher of the Year for the second time.

Amelia capped off her tremendous pre-college career by helping her Arizona Rising team win the PGF 18U National Championship last July in a 19-2 run rule victory.

Today, Amelia is a freshman in Corvalis, Ore. and looks forward to the spring for her first season of college ball, but she’s also been very busy off the field as well.

Putting her 4.0 GPA skills to use, the athlete wrote a book this fall titled Recruiting Rules: 10 Universal Truths Every Athlete Needs to Navigate the Chaotic World of College Recruiting that is available on Amazon for $19.99 in paperback and $9.99 on Kindle.

“This all started last year with my X posts and it turned into a book I wrote with my dad,” she told Line Drive this week.

Click HERE to go to Amazon to learn more about Amelia’s book and how to access it.

We caught up with the Oregon State freshman this week to learn more about how the book came to be… here’s our entertaining Q&A with the standout student-athlete.

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How did you get the idea to do the book?

Beginning my freshman year of high school, I began documenting my softball recruiting journey on X and Instagram.

Last year, after getting committed, I received many messages from fellow softball players asking me questions about my journey. I made a point to respond to each and every one!

But because so many of the questions were the same, I decided just to do a bunch of public posts for everyone to learn from. I posted them last December during my holiday break and the first one on the topic of camps went viral.

People continued to be interested in my series of posts and that’s what ultimately became the outline for our book.

Was it difficult to get support to do it from people behind you (like family, coaches, teammates)?

We didn’t tell anyone except for my mom that we were writing the book for a long time. It was completely self-published.

I edited my stories from my X/Twitter account and expanded on them during all of our summer tournaments and then my dad would head to the hotel lobby before work, and started putting together the rules.

We’d go back and forth most nights and tweak and just kept plugging along.

Once we got into a rhythm it went pretty fast. Our goal was to release on Sep 1, but at that point we had just finished our first complete draft. It needed editing, and my mom got in the mix helping with edits.

It seemed like it took forever, but when we were close to the final product, we reached out to coaches named in the book to get their blessing. At that point, there were a couple who knew what we were up to, but only at the end.

We had no idea what to expect from the softball community, but we also knew as a family we had put together the book we wished we had when I was 14.

The feedback we have received from the community has been overwhelmingly positive.

What is the purpose for your writing, was there one idea or instance that inspired you to write it?

After my series of X posts last year, other players and coaches told me I should sell my info as PDF files or do a newsletter. 

I just felt like I had said what I wanted to say and there was no reason to charge for it if it was already public.

Then my dad thought about it and said:

“Your stories were honest and helpful, but we know what didn’t work and what did work. We figured it out through trial and error. Let’s try to figure out the key rules that would help anyone get recruited.” 

And that became the recruiting rules that are the core of the book with my stories weaving in and out to support.

At first, I assumed nobody would read it and that it might be an embarrassing flop, but after seeing the final product and the very positive response from players and parents, it made me feel really proud to have taken the time to try to help everyone coming after me.

How are you marketing “Recruiting Rules: 10 Universal Truths Every Athlete Needs to Navigate the Chaotic World of College Recruiting?”

Because I started on social media over four years ago and got a large audience of fellow athletes, families, and coaches, I was able to build up a pretty good following on X and Instagram, especially after my post went viral; I got thousands more followers overnight.

After unveiling the book, I began highlighting excerpts of it and the different rules we wrote about. Since people have begun reading it, I have been regularly posting reader reviews and re-posting others’ comments about it.

Some girls would take photos of themselves with my book, and I would share those as well.  Respected people within the club softball and college ball community also have posted about it.

Sales took off, and now my book keeps selling from word of mouth. I haven’t had to pay for ads yet.  Our next goal is to start working with different club organizations to sell bulk bundles.

Was it hard to get permission/authorization from Oregon State to write it, since you are a student-athlete there?

The process is straight forward, but it did delay release.

I had no idea what NIL go was before and what a royalty contract is, but the main thing was I had to avoid using their logos to sell my own product.

I had to get a little creative with the book cover. I originally wanted it to be my signing table, but I think the cover art in the end turned out better. My mom did that. She used to do our schedule flyers for my old club and high school teams.

On the cover it says you “learned the hard way.” What was it that made it “hard” in the recruiting process?

I was what you would consider an undersized and under-connected club ball player.

I played for a small organization that only had two teams, and I played for both of them.  Making a name for ourselves was an uphill battle and I spent years outside the recruiting “bubble” trying everything I could to break into it.

Tons of showcases, camps, and travel made me start to plateau. I had no rest and couldn’t consistently work with the best strength trainers. I just wasn’t getting as good as I needed to be for my size even though I could hold my own against the best.

Coaches didn’t know what to think about my team or my size and my metrics were just a little below what catches their eye (60-to-63 mph vs 64-to-66 mph).

 If I was 6-foot tall they would believe they could add a few mph to my frame. At 5-foot-3, I needed to show them.

After a disappointing September 1st, my family and I had to re-evaluate my recruiting process. We basically reverse engineered to come up with a plan which meant focusing more on development and saving time, money, and stress. 

No more camps, just focused effort on building the speed and power I needed. If I had this book when I was 14, I could have escaped that difficult path from the get-go.

How many books/copies have you sold so far?

We have sold 500 books so far!

Is that accurate that it came out Sept. 21 so less than 3 months ago?

We self-published it on Amazon on Sept 21^st but did not announce it until October 6^th. We wanted to purchase authors copies for one last editing round so Oct 6th is the true day we began selling books. 

 It has been a little over two months now, and there was only one day (the day before Thanksgiving) where we didn’t sell any books.

How has the reaction been in the softball world, as far as you can tell?

The reaction has been amazing!

 I have players and parents writing to us all the time thanking us for doing this and coaches have also loved it!

I sent it to Derek Allister and he said it made him laugh and cry. He even said he was going to use the feedback to improve OnDeck in the future!

There have been a few that point out others have different paths, etc., but if people actually read the book I talk all about that. It’s why we wanted a full set of rules. Each person can apply what will help them the most.

Do you have plans to write more on softball in the future?

As of now, I don’t have any plans to write more (other than marketing the book). This fall, I unfortunately came down with mono which required me to be in bed a lot and I was able to dedicate a decent amount of time on social media helping promote it.

This spring, I have a feeling I will have very little time!

What is your major and does writing like this tie into it?

My major is Kinesiology, however, my language arts classes have always come easier for me than math/science.

How did Oregon State find you to recruit and sign you?

I had always had a hard time finding a way to contact the Oregon State coaches, but my first college softball dream was to go to school in Oregon.

My parents grew up in Northern California and we camped there when I was little. Coach Randy Kaye from the Rogue FC organization knew about me from my time playing in Arizona, asked me what my dream school would be and offered to reach out to Coach Matt Lisle for me, the OSU hitting coach at the time.

Coach Lisle messaged me the next day and a few weeks later he and the pitching coach came to watch me play at the Don Battles On event.

The rest is history.

— Brentt Eads/Line Drive Softball